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US-China climate deal: CSE seeks to blame Ramesh

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Press Trust of India New Delhi
Lambasting the US-China climate deal, an advocacy group today said the two biggest polluters signing such a pact was the result of a "disastrous formula" agreed by India in two key UN climate conferences when Jairam Ramesh was the Environment Minister.

Eminent environmentalist and Director General of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) Sunita Narain also termed as "self-serving" the deal in which both the US and China have agreed to converge their per capita emissions at 12 tonne in 2030.

Though there was not an immediate reaction from Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar on the China-US deal, Ministry sources indicated that it would not going to affect India's relations with China on cooperating in global climate platforms.
 

Both India and China are key members of BASIC group of nations on climate issues.

Narain's remarks did not evoke immediate response from Ramesh when contacted.

Environment Ministry officials feel that the US-China deal was reached on the concept of cutting down carbon emission through Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) and they are not internationally determined.

However, Narain hit out at the deal, saying it was not in line with meeting the 2 degree centigrade temperature target mandated by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change.

"China-US deal on climate change is not ambitious enough, it in fact will take the world towards a 4-degree Centigrade rise," she told reporters on the sidelines of a function here.

The deal was announced jointly by US President Barrack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping today in Beijing.

Blaming the policy adopted by the then Environment Minister Ramesh at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen and Cancun, Narain said, India under the Congress leader "had agreed to a disastrous formula called pledge and review".

"Instead of a target being set for the whole world, individual country targets were set. What we are seeing now is the culmination of that... Where China and the US put their number on the table and said this is how much we can do," she said.

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First Published: Nov 12 2014 | 7:56 PM IST

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